Installing
Invoked via the following command (available since 0.47.0):
meson install
or alternatively (on older Meson versions with ninja
backend):
ninja install
By default Meson will not install anything. Build targets can be installed by tagging them as installable in the definition.
project('install', 'c')
shared_library('mylib', 'libfile.c', install : true)
There is usually no need to specify install paths or the like. Meson
will automatically install it to the standards-conforming location. In
this particular case the executable is installed to the bin
subdirectory of the install prefix. However if you wish to override
the install dir, you can do that with the install_dir
argument.
executable('prog', 'prog.c', install : true, install_dir : 'my/special/dir')
Other install commands are the following.
install_headers('header.h', subdir : 'projname') # -> include/projname/header.h
install_man('foo.1') # -> share/man/man1/foo.1
install_data('datafile.dat', install_dir : get_option('datadir') / 'progname')
# -> share/progname/datafile.dat
install_data()
supports rename of the file since 0.46.0.
# file.txt -> {datadir}/{projectname}/new-name.txt
install_data('file.txt', rename : 'new-name.txt')
# file1.txt -> share/myapp/dir1/data.txt
# file2.txt -> share/myapp/dir2/data.txt
install_data(['file1.txt', 'file2.txt'],
rename : ['dir1/data.txt', 'dir2/data.txt'],
install_dir : 'share/myapp')
Sometimes you want to copy an entire subtree directly. For this use
case there is the install_subdir
command, which can be used like
this.
install_subdir('mydir', install_dir : 'include') # mydir subtree -> include/mydir
Most of the time you want to install files relative to the install
prefix. Sometimes you need to go outside of the prefix (such as writing
files to /etc
instead of /usr/etc
. This can be accomplished by
giving an absolute install path.
install_data(sources : 'foo.dat', install_dir : '/etc') # -> /etc/foo.dat
Custom install behavior
Sometimes you need to do more than just install basic targets. Meson makes this easy by allowing you to specify a custom script to execute at install time. As an example, here is a script that generates an empty file in a custom directory.
#!/bin/sh
mkdir "${DESTDIR}/${MESON_INSTALL_PREFIX}/mydir"
touch "${DESTDIR}/${MESON_INSTALL_PREFIX}/mydir/file.dat"
As you can see, Meson sets up some environment variables to help you
write your script (DESTDIR
is not set by Meson, it is inherited from
the outside environment). In addition to the install prefix, Meson
also sets the variables MESON_SOURCE_ROOT
and MESON_BUILD_ROOT
.
Telling Meson to run this script at install time is a one-liner.
meson.add_install_script('myscript.sh')
The argument is the name of the script file relative to the current subdirectory.
DESTDIR support
Sometimes you need to install to a different directory than the
install prefix. This is most common when building rpm or deb
packages. This is done with the DESTDIR
environment variable and it
is used just like with other build systems:
$ DESTDIR=/path/to/staging/area meson install
Custom install behaviour
Installation behaviour can be further customized using additional arguments.
For example, if you wish to install the current setup without rebuilding the code (which the default install target always does) and only installing those files that have changed, you would run this command in the build tree:
$ meson install --no-rebuild --only-changed
Finer control over install locations
Sometimes it is necessary to only install a subsection of output files
or install them in different directories. This can be done by
specifying install_dir
as an array rather than a single string. The
array must have as many items as there are outputs and each entry
specifies how the corresponding output file should be installed. For
example:
custom_target(...
output: ['file1', 'file2', 'file3'],
install_dir: ['path1', false, 'path3'],
...
)
In this case file1
would be installed to /prefix/path1/file1
,
file2
would not be installed at all and file3
would be installed
to `/prefix/path3/file3'.
The results of the search are